A few years ago, I told you about a situation that happened to me a number
of years ago in South Carolina.
I was doing a crusade at Bright Stadium,
the football stadium of the University of South Carolina, and the weather report
said there was rain coming. There were 25,000 people that had gathered in the stadium.
And so we wanted to pray before the service that God would hold back
the rain. And we prayed, "God hold back the rain, hold back the rain." And you know, we were
doing safe prayers. "If it's Your will" and "Lord, You know, if You don't want it to rain..."
And we were just try to cover our backs in case it rained anyway.
And there was a little, teeny short lady named Linda. Linda asks, after all of
the professionals prayed—after all the preachers. After all the preachers prayed,
Linda stood up. She said, "Do you mind if I pray?"
Linda opened up the prayer and said, "Lord, Your name is at stake. We told these people
that if they would come, they would hear a word from God. If they come and you let
it rain, and You control the weather, then You look bad, cause we told them You wanted
to say something to them. So if we told them You wanted to say something to them and
You don't keep back what You control so it could be said to them, then Your name is bad."
And then she threw a line that caused everybody to look at each other. She said,
"Therefore, right now, I command You in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to stop
the rain for the sake of Your name."
The preachers just started looked at one other with one eye, and we just said, "Woah!"
We went up on the platform. The sky is now getting black behind us. A guy was in touch
with the weather bureau, and they said, "The showers are coming, a heavy
thunderstorm, and they're coming right at you." We're now hearing at 7 o'clock the music
begins to play to begin the service, and there is thunder and
lightning right behind us. People start to stir in their seats. Some start to get up.
Some start to open umbrellas. Linda was on the stage. This man opened
up his umbrella over Linda. She said, "That's okay. I don't need it." I've only seen
this happen one time. The rain came to the stadium and split.
Half of it with this way, half of it went that way and then met again on the other
side of the stadium.
Now, this is not a story somebody told me. I was there. I was there. A whole bunch of other
people were there, and we saw a miracle right in front of my eyes cause a little
lady knew His name.
She knew His name. She understood that His name represented His character, and she
appealed to that. Why don't we appeal to that name? Because we don't know that name.
We do not understand how passionate God is for His own reputation.